Her eyes were dark grey, and her hair was bronze. Her figure was thin almost to emaciation; but health glowed in her smooth cheeks, and spoke in her swift movements and easy gestures. Her expression was responsive and devouringly eager. Life ran in her veins with turbulence, never with calm. Her mouth was pathetic and sensitive, but there was an odd suggestion of almost boyish humour in her smile.
Before she smiled, Fane thought, “She knows.”
Afterwards, “She cannot know.”
“Have you a few moments to spare?” Brune asked him. “Will you have tea with us?”
Fane looked at Mrs Brune and assented. He felt a strange interest in this man and this woman. The tragedy of their situation appealed to him, although he lived in a measure by foretelling tragedies. Mrs Brune touched an electric bell let into the oak-panelled wall, and her husband drew a big chair forward to the hearth.
As he was about to sit down in it, Gerard Fane's eyes were again irresistibly drawn towards the statue; and a curious fancy, born, doubtless, of the twilight that invents spectres and of the firelight that evokes imaginations, came to him, and made him for a moment hold his breath.
It seemed to him that the white face menaced him, that the white body had a soul, and that the soul cried out against him.
His hand trembled on the back of the chair. Then he laughed to himself at the absurd fancy, and sat down.
“Your husband has been working?” he said to Mrs Brune.